MEDIA ROOM - ISSUES and STATS >Issues
& Stats >Emerging
Concerns for Canada >Tobacco
at a Crossroad
• Annual
Canadian Tobacco Stats – English / Français
• Annual
Tobacco Tax Revenues
• Crop
Size Declines - English / Français
• Foreign
Tobacco Leaf in Canadian Cigarettes - English / Français
• Increasing
Presence of “Value Brands" - English / Français
• Funding
Options for TFIC’s Proposed Exit Strategy – English / Français
Canadian
governments are facilitating, if not encouraging, the
outsourcing of
Canada’s tobacco control problems – undermining the very spirit of their
domestic
tobacco control strategies and the recently ratified World Health
Organization’s Framework Convention
on Tobacco Control.
The much-wider public health and social ramifications of Canadian
governments encouraging foreign
leaf production in support of our domestic
marketplace, include:
• Potentially encouraging developing
nations into become economically dependent on tobacco.
• Potentially contributing
to child/slave labour in other countries.
• Potentially contributing
to deforestation in other countries.
• Allowing for a much cheaper tobacco
product to be developed and sold on our Canadian
marketplace (value brands).
There has never been a more pressing and health-related
need for Canadian governments to support
Canadian tobacco farm families, allowing them
to exclusively supply the existing Canadian market,
until a comprehensive,
equitable and orderly exit strategy for tobacco production in Canada
is
developed and delivered.
Canadian governments,
Canadian tobacco producers and the Canadian public health community
must work together to re-assert and retain control over
all tobacco production which supplies the
still existing Canadian market.
U.S. President’s Commission on Improving Economic Opportunity
in Communities Dependent on
Tobacco Production While Protecting
Public Health
Tobacco at a Crossroad - A Call for Action
Final Report – May 14, 2001
Tobacco farmers and their communities are in the midst of an unprecedented
economic crisis. At the
same time, public concern over the health
hazards of using tobacco products is at an all-time high.
Resolving
these two crises will require new, visionary tobacco policy in this
country.
Reducing tobacco use in the United States while simultaneously helping
tobacco farmers may seem
like a paradoxical challenge. But discussions
between tobacco growers, tobacco growing community
leaders and public
health representatives have established that these groups share many
common
goals and support numerous policies that are consistent with
these goals.
Both short-term and long-term assistance are warranted
for family tobacco farmers and their
communities because of two factors:
• past federal (government)
policies that have led many tobacco farmers to a heavy, if not total,
dependence on this crop and way of life;
and
• the dramatic reduction in purchase of U.S. tobacco leaf in recent
years as the result of a
complex set of trends that are both long
term and global in nature.
The preservation of a tobacco program that controls supply, maintains
a minimum price, moves
production permits into the hands of growers
and incorporates health and safety protection is in the
best interests
of tobacco farmers and the public health.
From a harm reduction standpoint, it is in the best interest of the
public health community to support
enhanced assurance of quota stability
for domestic production of tobacco. Tobacco farmers should
be
fairly
and equitably compensated for their quota to address this current crisis
and reduce their
dependency on tobacco, an action which is in the best
interests of tobacco growers and the
public health.
The U.S. tobacco farmer and the public should be protected against
unfair foreign competition.
For example, increased and expanded inspections
for non-approved pesticides on imported tobacco
are in the best interest
of tobacco growers, their communities and the public health.
Work towards establishing a dialogue between tobacco growers and public
health leaders began in
1985,
as a result of U.S. President Jimmy
Carter’s efforts.
By 1989, the report of a major national conference coordinated by
public health advocates
emphasized
that efforts to reform the tobacco
price support program must balance the concerns
of the health
community
and the interests of the family tobacco farmer.
By 1993, a national public health conference on tobacco recommended
increased assistance to
U.S.
tobacco growers.
By the mid-1990s, discussions among public health advocates and tobacco
growers began in
earnest.
In 1998, the Southern Tobacco Communities Project, Concerned Friends
for Tobacco, several
tobacco
grower organizations, the American Heart
Association, the American Cancer Society, the
campaign for
Tobacco-Free
Kids and others developed a set of 10 shared core principles.
The principles expressed a mutual commitment to:
• Reduce
disease caused by tobacco products; and ensure the future prosperity
and stability of
the
American tobacco farmer and tobacco farming communities. |
